The Woodshed
by Rayne-Jelly
Summary: Despite a less than perfect past Xander has become a successful business man with an engaging hobby who believes his life is as close to perfect as it will ever be. Spike disagrees. And so does something in the woodshed. Spander - Just so Steve knows it.


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AS A WARNING TO READERS:

I've been having some difficulty with line-breaks on this site, I'll try to denote subject changes as obviously as I can, but accidents happen.

**Furthermore,** this story was initially pretty porny. Well, for something I've written anyway. The version is a PG13, rated for violence and language, not sex; consequently it's a lot shorter: hah! Just to play on the safe side I've edited out the vast majority of scenes with _any_ sexual content so the admins on this site don't get pissy, but if you're interested in the actual (un-cut, uncensored, over-18) version it's on my livejournal. Malf0y-M0nkeys is the name, it's on my profile page here.

**Now For The Typically Extensive (but less important) Author's Notes:**

About the actual story: It's an altered universe story in (roughly) season 10, so everyone is 25-26 (barring Dawn, Giles, and Spike... naturally) and it pretty much explains itself from there. I don't know how realistic any of it is, some of it may be a little hokey (you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you read it, but I eat that stuff up… no small surprise that I should spit it back out).

I've never written a story that was such a bullet to the brain before. Well - maybe I have, but it's been several years and they're nary so long as this. Though I got pinged in the head by this idea while I was sitting on my couch with my computer in my lap, my impulse was to pick up a pen instead of opening a word file - so I feel that may have had something to do with it. I didn't start this story with any particular intention - I honestly thought it would be another meaningless drabble to make up the 3000th chapter of my drabble repository; I didn't have a plot, or any specific devices, or even any idea of where it was going - all I had was an image. Several hours later I was still writing, my left pinky was black and purple with ink, my notebook was filling and filling with my cramped and sloppy handwriting, and I had made some incredible headway. Four days later it was done. If it's bad, or if it doesn't make sense, blame the story. Because for a strange and uncontrollable four days I was the instrument as much as the instigator.

As a final thought: I wrote it, then typed it so there were a TON of typos. I then had (for the first time ever) someone beta for me. Any remaining typos/mistakes are mine, not his.

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The Woodshed

Xander pointed the chisel towards the base of the wood block and struck gently; letting gravity and the weight of the gouge carve a long strip out of the alder he was shaping. He liked working with his hands, liked the soft and hard under his fingers, the warmth of the wood turning under his palms, the familiar grip of tools after he no longer worked with them for a living. It made Xander feel in touch with the rhythms of life, even if he was only fooling himself.

Dawn accused him of being an old man with that look of defiant righteousness that he knew too well having seen it from both Willow and Buffy on occasion. Xander didn't dare deny it because she was right. It didn't stop her from squealing in delight when he'd presented her with a hand-made jewelry box, carved out of darkly stained cherry and inlaid with slivers of silver birch when she went away to school. He forbade her from opening it in front of her sister because there was five hundred dollars into the box tucked into a letter that explained it. If after two weeks she hated her room mate, her teachers, her classes, and the whole east-coast then she could come home, if she wasn't feeling the bad mojo then she should buy herself something purely selfish.

Dawn still called him once a week from Ithaca. Long distance calls that Xander both paid for and loved. He started another sharp line, molding another curve that began with the grain then worked itself away, he felt the resistance against his palm as the mallet came down a final time, sheering away a pliant red-orange strip that draped itself across his food. Xander flicked it off and contemplated the rough figure beginning to form in the wood.

There was always such potential with a new piece, a rough hunk of wood wrestled into the back of his old pickup, the bark stripped off and it could be anything he wanted it to be - but the combination of underlying grains in the wood and the nightmares that plagued him inevitably transformed them into grisly reproductions of Sunnydale's less savory population. This piece looked to be going the same way, a fiendish snarling monster, curled up on itself and hovering warily over a scrap heap of nonspecific body parts. Xander hadn't gotten anywhere near that stage, for now it was just a chunk of alder that had been worked into a basic shape, but he could see it there plain as day and knew what it would become.

With a sigh, Xander stood and blew his chisel free of sawdust. He'd long ago given up on planning what he carved before he saw it, the wood had a mind of its own and apparently so did his subconscious; but just once it would be nice to do something he could be in the same room with. The storage shed (otherwise known as a solid third of his woodshed) had enough of his old pieces to make his skin crawl. Buffy's too, he thought with a smirk. Xander felt eyes trace the back of his neck as he washed his hands at the little sink he'd installed. Flesh rising in bumps all down his arms, he drew his chisel back into his hand and turned around, but there was nothing there. Nothing but the dozens of demons he'd made out of unsuspecting chunks of wood, but they didn't count. Buffy slayed them, she didn't understand his need for a different sort of closure. He'd been in the slayer's pocket for going on ten years now, had seen creatures that would give Tim Burton nightmares leaping for his jugular or trying to rip his face off to use it as a washcloth - Xander figured by now he was owed a little psychological catharsis.

The first time Buffy saw one of his three full sized pieces staring her down with a mouth full of redwood teeth and etched menace she asked if he needed therapy, but only after trying to slay it. Xander laughed about it the whole time he was turning her stake divot into a jagged scar on the demon's chest. He laughed about it now as he spotted the looming monster in the shadowy corner of his workshop. Then his stereo clicked off.

Xander whirled around again, the chisel he'd never bothered to put up clenched in a white-knuckled fist. "Spike? Christ, you scared me!" The vampire in the doorway sneered and smoked in a supercilious way that Xander, because of their long acquaintance, read as an apology. He grinned in spite of himself, and tried like hell to be stern because one of these days Spike was going to make him stick a chisel in his leg and then no one would be happy - well, except maybe for the vampire, but vampire, blood - that made sense. "And hey! Music!"

"Harris, that stuff is older than I am." Spike never actually crossed the threshold into his work room, only Anya and Dawn ever took that liberty, though everyone had been invited to chat with him whenever he was out there. It made no sense to Xander, who enjoyed the vampire's company and was under the impression that Spike enjoyed his, but the vampire always hand the handy excuse of being nervous around so much free-flying wood. Tara did a better job of trying to explain that the woodshop was Xander's space and they felt like intruders there, but he wasn't thrilled about it. Which was why, despite multiple threats to the contrary, he would never move the stereo from its spot just inside the door - sometimes he liked to be interrupted.

"It's Glenn Miller!" Xander protested on the behalf of his music. When he'd been learning this sort of work from Old Whittler, a man he had worked with, the old man insisted that old techniques went the best with old music and Xander got stuck on the huge brassy tempos of Big Band Swing and 40s jazz. That was years ago though, before he'd been shifted over to a desk then up to management - before he could drink, even. "You're at least 50 years older."

"Remind me to find you some decent music." The vampire said with an eye roll, following his part of the script - they had this argument at least once a week and at least once a week Xander had to admit that Spike looked good for his age because Spike was watching him with a comfortable half-smile he'd developed over the years and Xander had a habit of staring. With an eye roll of his own, Xander turned away to put his chisel where it belonged, but when he turned back, Spike's comfortable smile had faded and the vampire's gaze was lingering over the scar on his abdomen. Xander tried not to flinch as he shrugged into his discarded t-shirt, ignoring the itch of accumulated sawdust and sweat that the cotton seemed to light on fire. Spike, realizing he'd been caught, blinked and met Xander's gaze again. "Shouldn't you be wearing shoes?"

Xander shrugged self-consciously. "Haven't lost a toe yet."

"It's the yet I'd be worried about, yeah? Yours don't grow back." Spike frowned over his barefoot state for another minute while Xander dusted off his latest shape and rubbed a little oil into the newest cuts to keep them from drying and cracking before joining Spike in his own doorway. "Anyway, it's Thursday."

Xander winced - Thursday night family dinners. It wasn't date night, it wasn't as early in the week as to be depressing, and everyone had the evenings off - so they had Thursdays. Xander hadn't forgotten exactly, he just hadn't exactly remembered. Feeling like a heel he pushed past the vampire, trying not to feel the cool hardness of Spike's arm, focusing instead on the itch of sawdust between his shoulder blades. "Do you think I'll have time to take a shower first?"

The night air was warm and sweet, grass crinkled under his feet as he crossed the hardly-worth-mowing patch of his lawn to the screen door. "No." Spike said easily, "but have one anyway. You'll feel better for one. I'll just steal some of your beer, and we'll drive up."

"Do you think they'll be very very mad at me?" He could handle mad from Anya, it was almost her permanent state of being, but the looming Buffy pouts and Willow reprimands made him wilt.

"No," Spike said again in a tone that made Xander flinch guiltily. "They know you well enough by now that dinner won't be on the table until a quarter after. Beer?"

Xander grinned, "It's in the fridge."

"Heathen."

"Limey!" He threw over his shoulder on his way up the stairs. The vampire knew him well. Xander sighed with bliss as the work day and the dust from the shed sluiced down the drain. He scrubbed quickly, knowing they were going to be late no matter what, but not wanting to keep any of the women waiting. Soapy fingers lathered his hair and skittered across his fingers in one breath. Fifteen minutes later he was washed, dressed, more or less dry, pushing his feet into sneakers and running a comb through his sopping hair - it would need a cut soon.

Spike was on his couch twirling an unlit cigarette between his long pale fingers. "Not in the house, please." Xander said automatically.

"Truck?"

"Sure."

Spike was a mystery to him - Xander had no idea why he'd stuck around as long as he had, but there would be protests if he decided to leave now. Spike was as much a part of the family as Giles, even Anya who only got flustered over large sums of cash would be upset if he packed up and left. a million years ago when Xander had been either disgusted by or furiously envious of Spike it was his fondest ambition that the vampire clear off, and he had to admit surprise that Spike hadn't dragged his carcass out to New York with Dawn, but Xander was increasingly grateful that he never had.

For one, if Spike left, Xander would lose his mechanic. The truck was an old, faded blue Chevy that cost him next to nothing and it was all down to Spike spotting a potential lemon. The vampire had spent the last three years bullying his vehicle into decent shape, the berating Xander for "chucking bloody great tree stumps in it and ruining the shocks." Which was why he bought such a junker in the first place, and Spike knew it as well as anyone. The truck was perfect, their shared project, but if there was a flaw it was a distinct lack of radio.

The conversation on the way to the witches' went like this:

"Stop whistling that bloody noise."

"It's Chattanooga Choo-choo!"

"I don't care what it's CALLED; the whistling's a bloody train-wreck. Vampire ears, pet."

"Oh. Right, sorry." And five minutes later "Oh, like The Ramones are any better!"

"I'm not whistling."

"You were SINGING - and what if Judy's NOT a punk?"

"Judy is a punk. That's the whole idea. It's indisputable."

"I feel like it's unfair to Judy's sense of individualism, labeling her as a punk." To which Spike did not deign to respond, so Xander went on. "And if Judy's a punk, and Sheena is a punk rocker, what's the difference? Is there a band member-groupie thing going on, or are they together?"

"Thanks. That's it; you've managed to ruin The Ramones for me."

Xander grinned triumphantly, "I'll get you stuck in the 40s yet."

* * *

They knocked on the door of the girls' place fifteen minutes after seven - a quarter of an hour late and Xander knew that he was going to have groveling to do despite Spike's snarky reassurance that they expected it. Whoever had the impression that women couldn't be ravenous as wolves at an elk was dead wrong.

The door swung open and Xander was wearing his best "I'm cute and stupid, don't hurt me" look when Buffy craned her neck to catch his eye.

"Found him in the Shed." Spike said by way of explanation and abandoned Xander to the wrath of the Slayer's appetite to mooch bites of cookie off Willow and Tara.

"You need a hobby." Buffy gave him a sharp look before it melted into an indulgent smile while she led him to the dining room.

"That IS my hobby."

"Most people don't have to pay an income tax on their hobbies, Xander." Anya chimed in, bearing a plate of asparagus over to the table and smacking his fingers when he tried to steal a piece.

"He has to pay income tax on 'em now?" Buffy asked, aghast. "How unfair is that? And why am I not demanding a percentage for inspiration?"

"Because no one in their right mind would believe that a tiny, cute, twenty-something such as yourself could possibly be the inspiration for the monsters I make."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, Mister Harris." Buffy snuggled him into a hug, not quite crushing the life out of him but coming pretty darned close. She didn't stop squeezing until Xander wheezed. It was always a strange and disconcerting feeling to be the largest person in a room, but the feeling was mitigated by the fact that every person in the house could easily kick his butt. Even Anya, who had only walloped him the once. The ex-vengeance demon shouldered the Slayer aside for an equally comfortable snuggle until Xander folded her under an arm. Thursdays - and he wouldn't have it any other way.

Anya was the best of his exes by far. They'd dated in their late teens under the strangest circumstances that Xander could imagine, but it just hadn't lasted. It had been a trying time for everyone, Dawn was caught in the throes of existential angst, Joyce had just died in a way that crushed them all, Tara was a mindless babbling wreck, and Glory was breathing down their necks. She'd nearly destroyed their lives, and Xander decided to propose to his girlfriend, who walloped him.

Xander had never been so impressed by a person. He'd been carrying that ring around for weeks, trying to get up the gusto to ask her, and she'd called him on his spectacularly bad timing - the night before the showdown with Glory - she accused him of romantic gestures before inevitable death, and she'd been right. Except that a week later when he proposed a second time she said no, and he'd been crushed. He was good enough to date, good enough as a boyfriend, but not good enough to be a husband, and Xander had been hurt enough, cruel enough to ask her if she'd only used him to meet a prerequisite for re-initiation into the vengeance demon club. It hadn't been a good time for anyone.

The worst part was having nowhere to go - he wasn't making huge amounts of money, and what he did make wasn't enough to break his lease, so he'd been stuck for an awkward three months where they lived in the same space, shared the same bathroom, and weren't speaking to each other. Xander spent a lot of time at Buffy's helping to look after Spike, who had been turned into vampiric porridge during the recent apocalypse, and helping Dawn with her homework.

But they'd moved on, Xander moved out, started carving and no longer felt the stab of inferiority and pain when he saw her behind the counter at the Magic Box. They'd now healed to the point where he could have two armfuls of young, attractive ladies and feel nothing but hungry.

"Much as I appreciate the snuggling, ladies, we saw each other two days ago. Did I miss big Scooby drama?"

"Nope." Buffy chirped, "This is punishment for being late to dinner."

"Also, we're enjoying the smell of clean male." Anya added, releasing him with an unrepentant smile.

"Thanks?" Now he'd be self-consciously sniffing himself all night, trying to make sure he didn't stink. He just knew it.

"You're welcome. Go get the food."

Xander bowed facetiously and did as he was told. Thursday always happened at The Witches', not that you'd ever catch Xander calling them that to their faces, it was all Spike's influence. Willow and Tara had found this place the year before they'd graduated together - Spike, Xander, and Buffy were manual labor to their furniture placement guru skills when they'd moved in, and in payment they were all treated to their first ever Thursday gathering. Dinner in their new kitchen was only pizza, but while the menu changed weekly, the locale never did.

Willow and Tara despaired of a detached dining room, but it had been unavoidable. Their actual kitchen was a decent size for whipping up meals, potions, and the occasional batch of Botched-Spell Cookies, but the small breakfast nook could never hold all off the Scoobies, chairs, elbows, and ravenous appetites, even with Giles and Dawn away. So the six of them sat around the table in the dining room, one of Xander's first ever projects and he winced with professional shame every time he saw it. Cooking happened in the kitchen, quiet conversations between the witches happened in the kitchen, stitches, 5am strategy meetings and family rows all happened in the kitchen, but the dining room was reserved for fun and fun only. Laughter, happy meetings, games of scrabble - it was Tara's rule and they stuck to it. So while Xander and his girls were snuggling happily in the dining room, Spike snuck into the kitchen and was talking softly with Willow.

Xander didn't give it much thought when he heard in low voices "don't know what to do." and "Always been completely oblivious." "Have you tried not being patient?" "I... bloody..." "Xander?"

"I've been sent for dinner." He explained guiltily, feeling like an intruder on an intensely personal conversation - he had been about to back away, but Willow had spotted him.

"And it's about time! You're late, buster!" Willow had a way of reprimanding him that turned Xander into a deeply sorry, utterly repentant, mess. It was a good thing his mother had never picked up that particular skill.

"I was working."

"Psh. I was standing in his door for five minutes and the pillock didn't notice until I unplugged his bloody stereo." Xander shot the vampire a wild look with the promise of eventual retribution, and the blonde only smirked back. There were moments where Spike's intense Britishness made Xander want to throttle him within an inch of his life or kiss him to the same. This was one of those moments, and Xander choked on the thought. It made his head spin with panic, made him hyper aware as he tried to cover with a babble.

"Ella?" Tara asked.

"Glenn." Spike replied.

"Oh. Yeah, then thanks for grabbing him for us or we'd've been here all night."

"It's new." Xander blurted. "you know how I am with new, there's always the hope that it won't be a scary monster I mean, this one will be - that creepy flesh-eating one we had about three years ago, but there's always the hope and anyway it was only fifteen minutes. Not like when you get all caught up in term papers and leave me standing for two hours..."

"Hey!" Willow protested, "That was only once!"

"Dinner!" Buffy demanded from the next room, and Xander still felt like he couldn't breathe.

Spike was watching him curiously and Xander could feel his heart pound. It wasn't the thought itself that panicked him, it was the constant feeling that Spike could read his mind in those moments and it would ruin everything. Xander avoided his eyes as he snatched up a plate of pot roast and potatoes and carted them into the dining room.

"Sorry Buffy, I was telling Willow what made me late."

"I don't wanna know..." she said hastily, but Xander ignored this.

"I think it's the Gnarl demon..." he said very deliberately, and felt his voice die in his throat.

"Ew! The creepy, paralyzing, skin-eating one?" And as Buffy's voice died too she shot him an indignant look.

Tara's rule was, in fact, more than just a rule. She'd hexed the room years ago and they'd all fallen into the trap at one point or another. Anyone caught talking about demons, slaying, or the scarier aspects of Sunnydale went mute for a full five minutes. Buffy spent her five minutes taking gulps of white wine and glowering at Xander.

Xander spent his deep in thought, intensely relieved at not having to explain himself. The deliberate silence prevented him from another humiliating babble, and gave him an opportunity to get his brain back under control. Not that his family wasn't used to it. It wasn't the first time he'd had less than platonic thoughts about Spike, but they scared the crap out of him so he shoved them in a box labeled "DO NOT TOUCH - EVEN UNDER DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES - THIS MEANS YOU!" and tried to let it go. Spike was his friend, the only friend he had that came conveniently equipped with a penis and a love of Dr. Who. Xander refused to jeopardize that even if Spike did occasionally rescue him from himself and had eyes that were hooloovoo blue. Xander patently refused to think about it because slow though he was he wasn't THAT dumb. He knew to quit when he was ahead. He had a male friend and didn't want that to change.

The relationship thing never worked in his favor anyway. Xander wasn't crazy enough to try it. There would undoubtedly be rejection and Spike probably wouldn't have the decency to be a hateful bastard about it either, he'd probably be nice, offer him a beer, tell him it didn't affect their friendship and Xander would hate himself for the next twenty years. No thank you. So when those thoughts snuck up on him he shoved them in their lockbox and got on with his life. Willow would tell him he was being unhealthy, so he didn't talk about it, didn't think about it; didn't think about anyone. Not even the attractive people he saw on the street, or on television - he didn't let himself feel that way for anyone.

"It's not like I even said the word demon!" Buffy burst out and was quelled into silence for another five minutes to the malicious snickering of all.

Dinner was a sweet affair, Tara and Willow made eyes at each other all night, Anya was in raptures about a new job with the bank, and even Buffy joined in the fun when she was allowed to talk again. Xander updated them all on the latest gossip from Dawn Tell them I'm too busy for a boyfriend but... his name is Kevin, and he has the sexiest tongue I have ever seen!, told them a funny story about one of his site managers and blue concrete, and offered to do dishes.

In the kitchen, Tara dried while he scrubbed and everyone else got a game of Monopoly going. He felt pleasantly buzzed, having consumed his fair share of the wine during dinner, loose and relaxed, possibly ready for a cup of coffee. "Willow and I are thinking of getting pregnant." She said serenely and waited for the spit-take that never came.

Xander would never admit to it, but in the ten years he'd been fighting demons and loving these people he'd grown up a lot. He didn't make any cracks about fresh blood for the coven, or "Magic spells," he just got quiet for a moment and gave it some serious thought. "Makes sense." He said at last. Tara was easier to talk to about these things than willow would have been, as much as he loved her, his best friend got hyper and defensive when anyone brought up any aspect of their relationship. Tara let a man think aloud. "You're both young and healthy, Willow will have her Master's before a baby can be born, you practically own the Magic Box and you're stable enough for it... besides, the kid won't want for love, I can tell you that."

Tara smiled at him in the way that made him think of oceans and he realized that she'd never asked his opinion. He gave it anyway "I think it's a fine idea."

"Willow said you would."

"Smart girl you've got there."

Tara smiled her oceans of thought, but she was trying not to laugh. "She wanted me to ask if you'd, and I quote, 'be our baby daddy.' I told her I'd phrase it more delicately than that - but I'm asking."

It was by the miracle of alcohol-blunted synapses that Xander didn't faint. Even so, he was proud of himself for not falling over. "Think about it?" He choked out; Tara nodded and took a sudsy dish from his hand before he could drop it. Surely there were a million people in the world better suited to the cause, but if his girls felt differently who was he to argue? Xander wasn't entirely certain he'd want to pass along his shoddy, demon-attracting DNA but it was Willow and Tara asking, and he had never been able to refuse them anything.

He was about to agree in a tentative 'ask me again when I'm sober' sort of way, but Tara evidently felt that she'd planted a seed and could change the subject. "When are you going to find a smart girl of your own?" She asked delicately, "Or man. Or wood nymph."

Back on familiar, albeit resented territory, he quipped "Hey, that was one of my better dates, you know. She was nice!"

"She disappeared into her tree when the sun came up, Xander."

"And what a well tended tree it was." These conversations were easier to have with Tara too, but he could honestly say that if he had to have the 'lonely people can be happy' conversation one more time he'd kill something. He didn't want another clever, innocent soul that he'd have to explain his scars to, he didn't want another person he was starting to care for surprise him with sudden demonic tendencies, and he sure as hell didn't want to be having this conversation again. "Besides, I'm fine, I've got beautiful women lining up to have my children."

Tara cringed and he immediately felt guilty for making her regret asking. He was a jerk. "And I couldn't imagine a higher honor." He said after an apologetic breath, hoping she wouldn't care when he put dish-damp hands on her shoulders. "I'm happy. I really am, happy and content and I have everything I need in the world. I'm also tipsy. And a jerk."

"Willow worries." She said by way of apology, turning away from him for a moment to rifle in one of the kitchen drawers. "I've got some more of that salve you use. You've been rubbing it into your hands?"

"And on this stupid..." his hand hovered over his stomach for a brief moment before fluttering away and accepting the jar she handed him." Arthritis and skin care, you truly are a queen."

"I-it's not... cosmetic. It's just to keep it from p-pulling. I-I could try t-to..." He'd made her stutter nervously, it happened to any of them whenever someone mentioned the injury, but Xander felt like an ass for making her nervous about it. It made him sad to realize that even the Scoobies had their taboos, and he was one of them. "Spike s-says it's n-not that b-bad b-but... You never l-let me s-see it s-so I don't know i-if I-I can he-help w-w-with th-th-th." She gave up, gesturing helplessly.

"Spike doesn't have a normal concept of not bad." Xander shrugged, going for casual but feeling tight and exposed. "Don't worry about it, this is enough - this is more than enough. Thank you."

"XANDER!" Anya's strident voice from the next room was a sharp relief, drunk and rambling. "You're still sober aren't you? Spike says I cheated him but I didn't cheat him, I never cheat people. I am very scrupulous with money. That's a well known fact about me. Come fix it!"

Tara and Xander shared a look of amused affection and scrambled to take some coffee to the combatants.

At half past ten the Monopoly game ended when Anya murdered them all with chains of hotels across the board. Xander and Buffy were still afloat, barely, but Spike was sunk in debt to both Xander and the bank. His ex may have been scrupulous with money, but Xander was never letting her be the banker again. "S'that bloody Scotty dog." the vampire growled in his defense while everyone was collecting the tiny green houses and making their goodbyes. Xander had to be to work at six, Buffy wanted to patrol etc. Thursday nights never ran past midnight, even on Hugh Grant nights, but they were fun. "S'unlucky. Dru always said so."

"Give you a ride back to your end of town, Blondie?" Xander asked while the girls tinkered in the kitchen. Spike's end of town wasn't very far from Xander's end of town, which in truth wasn't very far from THIS end of town, but despite being able to walk, Spike frequently accepted.

"Sure. Thanks."

In the truck Xander caught himself humming Frank Sinatra Witchcraft and stopped before Spike could tease him about it, so he talked instead. He told Spike about Dawn's Kevin, and Tara's not-quite-questions about having a baby. The vampire seemed subdued, he barely threatened to tear Kevin's spleen out and spent a good deal of time staring out the window - not for the first time Xander wished Spike had a reflection or he had a mind-reading ability so he could see what the vampire was thinking. The closer they got to Restfield, the more Xander wanted to reach out with the delicate/supportive gesture that worked so well on the girls, but Spike wasn't a girl, and Xander was almost afraid he'd draw back a bloody nub.

"I guess this is your stop, man." The breaks squealed.

"Thanks." Spike answered gruffly, and pushed his door open.

"There something wrong? Anya always whips us at Monopoly - it's cool, we'll play Scrabble next week and you can show her what's what."

Xander wasn't sure what happened next. One minute he was teasing the surly vampire, the next he thought he heard Spike mutter "Oh fuck it." and there was kissing. Lips on his, chapped but soft and moving against his with determination, a hand running briefly through his hair, and Xander's fingers had ALMOST curled in the duster before Spike was gone. Vanished abruptly into the cemetery, and Xander sat there in his idling truck for a long time, wondering if he was losing his mind.

In a daze of wine, endorphins, and confusion he popped the car out of neutral and drove home. There was a lot to think about when he fell into bed.

* * *

The phone rang. Xander fumbled blindly for it, managing to locate it on the second ring, and pushed the speaker towards his mouth. "Hullo? Buffy? Are you okay? Who's hurt?"

"Xander! Sorry, no, no one's hurt. Xander, it's me, Dawn."

Xander's brain managed to fall out of the adrenaline induced rush of panic that, he looked at the clock and groaned, early morning phone calls always induced in him. Exhaustion weighed on him like lead pajamas. "Dawnie, you okay? It's one in the morning..."

"Four actually. Xander, I'm freaking out."

He sat up. "You're not pregnant are you?"

"No!" To his relief she laughed, "And thank you for reminding me that it can ALWAYS get worse."

"That's what I'm here for." He mumbled drowsily, "Spike threatened to rip out Kevin's spleen by the way, but if you get pregnant I have dibs on his spine."

She squeaked in indignation "You told Spike!?"

"Of course I told Spike, it's Spike." Xander said dopily, still half asleep. Mm, Spike, blonde, sexy, sweet lips of Spike. This thought woke him up completely; heart pounding and Xander mentally beat the thought into submission before bringing his focus back to Dawn. "So why are you calling me at four in the morning?"

"I have a midterm in three hours and I'm flipping out!"

Midterms already, it felt like she'd left only yesterday - time certainly flew. "What class?"

"Sophomore A&P." Xander could practically hear her wringing her hands. "I am so totally unprepared for this."

"Like Buffy with French. Dawn - I don't know anything about anatomy and physiology, you'd be better off talking to Spike," There was that pesky vampire again, popping up in his brain. "Or Willow!"

"If Spike in any way had a phone I would. But I don't need you to tell me about heart valves - I need you to distract me. Scrabble scores, demons, anything."

She knew them too well. Dawn was an outstretched tree limb, distant but still very much a part of them, and he couldn't wait for her to be home at Christmas. Xander quickly thought through the list of latest Scooby developments, trying to think of something that wouldn't bore her to tears. "Looks like Buffy and the principal are getting shaky again."

Dawn made a frustrated noise. Buffy's dates with mortals rarely went well, that wasn't news, it was just more of the same. She'd somehow landed a job at the new high school as the live-in social-worker/therapist for the bratlings that were trapped there for four years. Xander had tried like hell to get his firm to move the location of the new high school, but that was before he had any weight with the company, and they thought he was crazy when he told them that the place was evil. He'd helped build it right on top of the hellmouth, and felt the whole time as though some of his greatest works were being reversed - he'd blown the place up, it should have stayed blown up. In construction he'd had Willow and Tara ward the site six ways to Sunday, and Buffy had miraculously found a job on the premises in order to protect the students, they were doing as much as they possibly could without constant access to the thing, but the hellmouth still tried to eat someone once a week. The interesting thing though wasn't Buffy's employment at the school; it was her decision to date the school's strangely understanding Principal. The man had done fairly well for an old boring administrator guy Dawn had been unhappy, given that she spent four years under his reign, he was pretty laid back, and had a quirky sense of humor, but after almost a year things were not looking good. Dating the slayer, Xander had come to realize, was something like trying to cuddle with the sun – people just burnt out after a while.

Still, that wasn't what Dawn had called for, so Xander steeled himself against potentially eardrum destroying squeals of surprise and confessed the thing that was really on his mind. "Spike kissed me."

"About damned time!"

That was NOT the reaction Xander had expected. "Huh?"

"He's been wanting to for like... two years, dummy. You weren't mean about it, were you?"

"I wasn't anything about it!" He defended instinctively while his brain ran around inside his skull like a crazed chicken. "Two years?"

"I can't believe you haven't noticed," Dawn said snidely, "You're the reason I don't have a vampire in New York to help me with my stupid A&P. Though... I like my boyfriends to have spleens, so I might owe you."

"It's not nice to lie to me Dawn, I'm gullible after midnight."

"Like I'd lie about this. Please, Spike would kill me."

"Buh... but what about Buffy?" He knew it was stupid while he said it, Spike had taken the principal out for a beer and a few games of pool to welcome him and wish him luck, something the vampire later said was "very fucking weird." That flame had died a long time ago, but Xander said it anyway because his brain was shutting down and he couldn't fathom any alternatives.

Dawn sighed, "Xand, he gave that up years ago. After Glory then the thing with the chip... it was never gonna happen and he knew it. But you... he's been holding a torch for years. I just don't get how you've never seen it. He's not exactly subtle."

"But... WHY?" Xander wailed. He'd been hoping that the kissing thing was a fluke, a spatial relations issue - bizarre geometry or an inexplicable warp in space/time. He'd been hoping it was a dream and he could go back to the safe, happy world where Spike would always be uninterested and he could make excuses for not being romantically attached to anyone.

"Because you're hot, probably." Dawn was unrepentant despite his squawk of protest. "It's true! I'm a totally impartial party and I'm telling you that you're hot, you're funny, you're sweet and crazy and Spike likes you."

"No. No way Dawnie, that's too Twilight Zone, even for me."

"Xander, you like the Twilight Zone, and Spike likes you. Denial is not your friend here." For a moment she paused, and sounded for the breath of a long, distant moment, guilty. "Why? Don't you want Spike kisses?"

"I... Dawn that is not the issue!"

"It very much is the issue. I'm worried I told you something that I shouldn't have, and liking Spike kisses is very much the issue." Dawn giggled, absurdly, and Xander blinked in the darkness of his bedroom wondering what the hell she was laughing for. "There was a time when I would've done just about anything for some Spike kissage."

"Gah! No I... can we not talk about this?"

She laughed harder still before sobering, "Okay, okay I'll stop. But you have to be nice to him - he did something brave and it's been a long time since Buffy, and she broke his heart into about fifteen million pieces, so you've got to be nice to him or I'm gonna kick your well-shaped butt."

"Dawn..." he choked out, strangled by a bizarre mix of giggles and mental screaming, "Can we please change the subject?"

"Consider this the shovel talk from Spike's corner, what? Oh! Yeah, sorry... new subject. Hey! This was trippy, last week in my art class my professor showed a slide of one of your demons. The Brengi I think, but it's a little hard to tell when they're not green and trying to eat your kidneys, y'know?"

"I do know. That's... really, who buys those things?" Xander had asked the question a million times. He didn't understand it - he carved the damned things to get them out of the way of his head and people actually paid money for them. He suspected all of his stuff went out to the demon market or to spoiled, bored, and gothic bratlings that were bored with blowing their money on video games.

"Dunno, Xand. I'm personally not in love with the Brengi one, but Professor Lawsey was going bonkers, went on and on about flawless seams and such realistic use of the veins in the wood, practically rhapsodizing your amazingness. I thought I'd die trying not to laugh."

Xander chuckled, having heard volumes about the incredibly enthusiastic Professor Morris Lawsey before. "Dawnie, if it'll help you get an A in art theory I'll send you one of the little guys to give him."

"Xander!" She sounded scandalized, but he knew her eyes would be sparkling mischievously and he missed her fiercely. "That would be bribery!"

"Dawnie, I blew up my high school and did a little dance when the principal got eaten. I hardly think a little bribery will stain my academic soul. Let me send you one of the pixie eaters."

"You rebuilt it so it doesn't count." She pouted, having been subject to four years in that place. "I also need a stake."

Xander felt the cold stab of fear, knowing that he hadn't been there when she lost the last one, and that she was across the country where he couldn't protect her. Sometimes all he could do was send her stakes and pray, but it didn't do much for his peace of mind. "Everyone okay?" He hated the waver in his voice, but couldn't help it.

"Yeah - just a fledge in the wrong place, but the people I was with were really freaked out so I gave them my stake."

"I'll send you one the minute the post office opens up."

They talked for another forty minutes, idle back and forth about her friends and classes until all of the frustration left her voice. At a little after two in the morning she stopped mid sentence and cursed impressively. "Why do you let me do this to you?"

"Huh?"

"Xander! It's after two in the morning and I KNOW you have work in a few hours. I'm gonna study for an hour, go shower, and ace my midterm, you are going straight back to sleep for the next three hours. Why on earth do you let me do these things?"

Xander laughed at her, "Because I love you, I can't make you hot chocolate from California, and no one should suffer midterms alone." She made another one of her frustrated noises.

"Either start taking care of yourself or let Spike do it for you!"

Xander choked.

"I'm kidding. Kindof. But seriously, I'm gonna let you sleep now." Like that was gonna happen. "Thanks Xander."

"Any time, Dawnie" he wheezed.

"I love you."

Xander didn't move until the dial tone became the familiar and annoying trill of three tones and an electronic woman's voice telling him to hang up and try again, so Xander hung up.

There wasn't the slimmest chance he'd get back to sleep after that, so Xander climbed out of bed, made himself a pot of coffee, and padded into his workshop. The Gnarl stared at him out of rough alder, but Xander ignored him for a moment. Instead he went to the rows upon rows of finished demons that stood trapped in acts of violence and searched for one of the better Pixie Eaters. They were small, only eight inches high, but life-sized - a hoard of the buggers had torn through Sunnydale leaving rust and destruction in their wake until Buffy managed to kill the queen and Xander had carved several. He chose the best one off the shelf, the one that took a chunk out of his forearm, packed it up, and marked it out of the paper inventory that Anya insisted he keep.

It was her idea to sell it all. Once they'd started speaking again, and when the Scoobies discovered the collection of demons in his woodshed, she'd become an efficient business manager that took ten percent off the top of his profits. The rest of the money was dumped into a savings account for him; he called it the Sunnydale Emergency Fund and never touched it.

Xander then padded over to the cluttered work-in-progress bench and plucked two solid oak stakes from the bin he kept full of them. It took him about twenty minutes to carve a D into the handle and a tiny skeleton key on the shaft of each of them, but he did so lovingly. When he'd first started this he gave all the Scoobies little identifiers that carved into their stakes and he didn't know if they appreciated the gesture or even noticed it, but it made Xander feel good to do it so he did, so frequently that he could carve them in his sleep now.

Sanding down the edges of the relief and giggling to himself, Xander spotted Spike. Not the real one, of course, because the vampire had taken off like a bat out of hell and for a sick sinking moment Xander wondered if he'd ever see him again. He'd spotted the wooden Spike, or the block of maple that was supposed to become Spike, his first and only commission.

Xander backed away from the maple warily, like at any moment it would leap at him. He grabbed a number of chisels and his fine slip-knives and pointedly ignored the pale wood, sitting down with the alder instead. But Spike was on the brain as he worked.

In the days when they hated each other Glory turned Spike into Swiss cheese. She'd put holes in him, broken bones, tried to suck his mind out through his temples, but Spike had kept his confidences, refused to tell her what she wanted to know about Dawn, and Xander was forced to respect him for that. A few months later, when everything had gone to hell, when Anya smacked him, Tara was mindless, Willow was a wreck, Giles was coming apart at the seams, and Buffy was going to take on a hell god with a troll's hammer, Xander stopped hating Spike altogether.

Things were a nightmare on that construction site, Buffy fighting Glory, fighting to climb the creaking tower and rescue her sister, Willow retrieving Tara's sanity with magic that was downright frightening, and Spike, leaping off a fifty-foot tower as he wrestled with the sycophantic demon that had threatened to touch Dawn. That demon was one of the few full-sized pieces that Xander had carved, a suspiciously quiet little man that was in his head years later and Spike was the reason why.

The vampire's arms shattered back to the shoulders with the impact of his fall, his legs were crushed, and he'd flattened enough ribs that he looked as spattered and lumpy as cottage cheese. The demon he'd landed on managed to survive the fall, though Spike was seconds from dust. The creepy little bastard was wheezing, broken, and trapped beneath Spike, but it was alive. Xander picked up a piece of pipe and beat its head in until it stopped twitching. He then used his pocket knife to open a vein for the vampire.

There had been a terrifying moment where everyone was sure that Spike was going to dissolve into dust - Dawn, Anya, Tara, and Willow were clinging together in a tight bundle of tears and trauma, Buffy stood by solemnly watching them in shock while Xander willingly bled and her watcher killed the doctor that had tried to save her mother's life, and the hell god with one handy throttling. When Xander staggered back pale and dizzy, the Slayer took his pocket knife and his place.

A month later Xander was learning how to carve, being called a natural by Old Whittler, he and Anya were no longer and item, and Spike wasn't yet ambulatory enough to deny his company.

They were friends after that - it was impossible not to be. Xander would have a tricky time not liking any guy that jumped off a tower and spent six months in traction for the love of a little girl - he found it especially hard NOT to like Spike. The vampire didn't have a chip anymore, but it didn't matter. Not after that.

They'd discovered its uselessness some time ago and no one could ever figure out what caused it, but the general consensus was that the destruction of the chip was a good thing. Xander had been baiting the vampire for old time's sake, harmless jabs at Spike's ego because the vampire had always given as good as he got, but when Spike took a playful swing and when Xander ducked instead of dodged and came out of it with a black eye, everything went to hell. The vampire hadn't made an attempt to hurt any of them in months, he was as surprised as the rest of the room, and he was as surprised and frozen as everyone else as he very pointedly did NOT fall over in pain.

Xander switched chisels, going finder still until he was working with a 1/8th inch gouge, and shuddered in the remembrance of that moment.

Spike was pole axed, completely stunned for a tense minute that lasted forever between them - then the moment broke and the vampire snarled into gameface, pushing himself towards the wall. Defensive and animalistic, he made for the Summers' front door, trying to run away from them. Every time he thought about the look on Spike's face, the betrayal that the government technology keeping him safe had failed, he felt a wrench in his gut, a guilty tremor that ran through his whole body. It had been Xander's fault because for one stunned moment he hadn't been thinking and whispered with wonder "What happened to the chip?"

Buffy unfroze when he said it, and Xander hated himself. She launched herself over the couch, snagging a stake off the end table. He sank a fist into her stomach, she split his lip. He head butted her; she broke an end table with him. He kicked her into the china cabinet, she shoved him up against a wall and things moved in stop-time as Spike slid out of game face and Buffy collapsed against him, sobbing into his chest. Dawn had been screaming, Xander couldn't breathe, and that had been the end of it. There was some speculation about how the chip had stopped working, whether it was Glory trying to pull his brains out through his ears, the dive off the tower, or some sort of miracle, but no one had questioned Spike's right to be a part of the Scoobies.

Two years ago, Dawn had said. Wanting him for two years. Xander didn't know what that was supposed to mean, or what he was supposed to do with the information. He wanted to put it out of his mind, but the thought kept creeping back. Two years wasn't long on the scale of "Demon of the month" but it was huge on Xander's personal calendar of injuries and anniversaries.

Anya had sold his first piece, Dawn was headed to an Ivy League school on the Watcher's dime, and Xander went on his first ever date with a man. It was hard to date on the hellmouth, his history of demons and life-sucking mummies tended to get in the way of trusting people, but he'd been so damned persistent and charming that Xander had an impossible time saying no. It had been a long time since Anya, after all, and there had only been the tree sprite in between.

Paul was completely unlike any of his previous relationships - he was male for one thing, and human for another. They'd seen a bad action flick, kissed tentatively in the darkness of the theater, and the whole thing had been wonderfully sweet and irregular until Paul pulled a knife out of god knew where and things got more normal, fast.

If Spike hadn't been there Xander would be dead in an alley. It had occurred to him some months later that the vampire had probably been stalking him or trying to sabotage things, but he was too grateful to care. His date struck with the knife just above Xander's hipbone and yanked it up in a brutal curve that slid across his belly button then knicked one of his ribs in a giant and primitive arrow. The scar ran in a long arc from the outside of his ribs, to his navel, and back around to his hip - a deep, potentially fatal gash that he had felt every inch of. Xander lost a few feet of intestine and a great deal of blood - Paul lost his life. Human, even a psychotic armed human, didn't stand a chance against a demon that was much bigger and badder than he was. Xander stayed conscious just long enough to watch Spike literally tear his spine out.

Xander woke up in a hospital with Spike on his right side, and Willow asleep in a chair in the corner. When Spike looked up at him he had that LOOK. The look on the maple, the look that Xander could never get away from - a permanent expression of pity and sorrow.

Xander spent months recovering, being fed soft, easy to digest food, and fitted with a catheter for an embarrassing length of time, while he was building back his strength and re-learning to walk. It was a long series of painfully humiliating experiences and his friends were there for him every step of the way when all he wanted was to recover with some dignity. At work they stuck him on a desk and left him there, even when he was back in fighting form, which took much longer than he would have liked.

Life as a Scooby had given Xander an ability to think under pressure, he took control of situations he had no business nosing into, and drew the attention of higher ups in the company. He'd been given a promotion to the main office, stuck him in resource management and two years later he organized resource management for the entire California branch of the firm. His friends told him it was a miracle and a gift, the fact that he'd been promoted to management without any sort of degree and a checkered work history, and the money was nice, but Xander would never recommend stab-wounds as a means of promotion Mostly because of the look he got from anyone that knew he'd spent weeks in a hospital trying not to die then been bumped up the corporate ladder.

Spike's half-joking commission would never be finished because the vampire wanted ferocious and terrifying, and all Xander could see was pity.

The sun began slipping up over the horizon, adding a bluish light to the yellow lamps in the shed, and Xander forced himself to put down the chisels and take a shower.

* * *

Friday night was date night, except that was a joke and everyone knew it. Friday nights belonged to apocalypses, frat parties with possessed inhabitants, and particularly frisky patrols. Date night was a thing of the past - Dawn was right, they were getting old.

She called him again at work when he was halfway through the Mulholland project just to tell him that she did just fine, thanks, and he was SO her hero for letting her yammer at two in the morning. Xander was happy to hear it, relieved that her midterms went well, and would do anything (including, but not limited to) the famous banana dance to make her smile. She didn't ask about Spike, or whether he'd slept, and Xander didn't volunteer any information on that front.

When he got home in the afternoon, Xander wanted to hug his little house and was just loopy enough to do it. He loved his house. His little sanctuary out of the way and dirt cheap - sure living on the outskirts of Suburbia meant having to commute everywhere (five minutes to the girls, any of the four of them, 30 minutes to the office which was on the OTHER other side of Sunnydale, and only 15 minutes from the Bronze) but he LIKED that. It was out of the way, small, comfortable, and his. Not the shining and sterile apartment he and Anya had shared or his parents' dingy basement. This was his house, paid for monthly with his money, and furnished according to his tastes in dark comfortable furniture and soft yellow light. He let the earth in, marched it right to his front door then let it inside, and it was perfect. It also meant that Xander had a lot of house plants to water, but he loved that too.

Loopy though he as, he wasn't inclined to snuggle with his siding all night, which was fortunate because his next door neighbor was giving him a very strange look. Xander waved and made to go inside, glaring balefully at the woodshed as he did. For just a moment he thought the shed glared back, and shivered.

It was an eyesore, something of a joke among everyone that saw it, sprawling across his backyard in a series of lumpy walls, none of which formed an exact right angle. The former occupants of Xander's home hadn't opted for the classic four-walls-and-a-roof look; instead they'd built the initial structure out in three directions until Xander had an ugly, lop-sided and ramshackle T on his lawn. It was hard to feel much animosity for the inside, but on the outside it was damned ugly. His neighbors were good about it though; they didn't threaten to burn it down for one thing and just chuckled when he offered to repaint the thing. That was one of the nice things about Sunnydale - when they weren't interested in eating or dating you, people were nice. The employment opportunities were amazing because of constant turnover, and the real-estate market was dirt cheap because of the number of people that died suddenly. To everyone else these were privileges that no one realized they had; to Xander it was a fair trade off for years of dedicated civil service.

Xander took one last disgusted look at the work shed, decided he was too tired to be allowed a brain let alone a chisel, and went inside. If he tried to work on the Gnarl he'd probably spear himself in the thigh again, and that was never fun.

Xander dropped his briefcase in the kitchen and practically crawled up the stairs towards his shower. He normally had a policy against showering twice in a twelve-hour period, but he was tired, and smelled like the office coffee, so he was willing to make an exception. It was more like three showers in twenty four hours anyway, Xander thought to himself as the water heated and he scrubbed his teeth clean, his water bill would be ridiculous if things went on like this, but Xander was exhausted, Sunnydale was headed into its rainy season, and he just didn't give a shit.

The water was scalding when he climbed in, but Xander was too tired to change it. He let his brain slide offline, work, Buffy, Dawn, Anya, the witches and their potential children; they all slid out of his mind and down the shower drain. He had all weekend to just hang out like a mindless zombie, putz around and do nothing, maybe mow the lawn, though that was a joke. Two days of nothingness where he could afford not to think provided nothing exploded out of the hellmouth and tried to sit on them all.

Xander stood in the scalding hot water and tried to empty his mind. He refused to actively think about it, but Spike was like a kernel of popcorn lodged in the teeth of his mind, being turned and prodded but refusing to come loose and be washed away. His mind felt full of the vampire, the things Dawn had said, Spike's frustratingly appealing availability - the vampire was always around, always in his thoughts, smoking, sneering, and sex on legs as much as Xander tried to deny it - was it any surprise that his mind kept skittering to thoughts of the vampire?

Xander scrubbed off the day with a bar of soap, ran shampoo through his hair and pointedly Did. Not. Think. He didn't think about dry, soft lips, didn't think of intelligent blue eyes, and didn't dare remember how long it had been since anyone had touched him.

He was exhausted, standing under the downpour lost in not thinking until the water began to run cold. Xander rinsed off in the luke-warm water and shut it off, moving like a zombie as he toweled himself off and slid into a pair of grey sweatpants from the hamper. He felt like shit, guilt and exhaustion warring in him as he wandered down the stairs. There had been no satisfaction in it, imagined scenes he refused to acknowledge after the fact and hot water drawing a reaction out of him that was more perfunctory than pleasurable.

Still feeling like a soggy dishtowel, Xander shuffled into the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of his fridge before flopping down on his couch. Dawn's ribbing him had been in his head all day, sending him subconscious flashes of Spike from the recesses of his memory that flustered him. Damned college students, thinking they knew everything about everyone. It didn't help that Spike was his friend, a status he wasn't willing to give up because Dawn may have inspired something in him, but she was flat wrong about Spike. He knew it.

He couldn't move on, wouldn't move on, and Spike would never EVER be remotely interested in him because there was something fundamentally wrong with Xander. Something that attracted cruel and psychotic humans that emasculated him, strangled him, and gutted him by turns - something else that attracted demons that broke his heart. He was done. So done with the idea with comfort and mutual affection that he wouldn't even let himself fantasize, just locked it all away and waited for the day that people would stop asking him if he was ever going to get a girlfriend.

But Spike had kissed him, and it was hard to misread that. All day Xander had been plagued by 'what if's. What if Dawn was right? What if he and Spike...? What if he irreparably fucked up the buddy routine they had going? What if it hadn't been a fluke? What if Spike was a crazy human or a demon that would break his heart?

Spike would understand the scars; the vampire didn't need any of them explained. He DID understand them, had been there as Xander watched his intestines spill out onto the ground, had been the one to lift Xander and carry him to the hospital while Xander had ridden on waves of agony and horror. Spike understood about monsters - he never said, but he understood.

What if Xander was wrong? And what was he wrong about?

With a long suffering sigh developed after life with six women, Xander took a swig of his warming beer and let himself drift in front of the idiot-box.

* * *

He was in the woodshed, carving out a trinket for Dawn, feeling the olive wood mold itself in the way he directed. It was just a small thing; he would send it along in a few weeks, waxed a natural light brown that would eventually wear to green and made especially for her birthday. Sometimes Xander wondered to himself if she ever wore them, these trinkets he sent her to show her he thought of her, but then he figured it didn't matter much, just as long as she knew that she was missed and loved.

Buffy and Willow spent a good deal of time convincing him that they would be proud to wear Xander Harris originals, ribbing him so much about it that he eventually made them earrings to shut them up. Simple twisty pieces of basswood that they cooed over then forgot to wear until Tara stole Willow's and made them her regular pair. The olive wood had been a gift from his neighbor, something the old fellow claimed was just taking up space in his garage. Xander tried to pay for them but the neighbor only shook his head and put the check back in Xander's mailbox; he eventually gave in and was making Dawnie a necklace.

The small work made his hands cramp as he drilled then filed out the hollow in the double-helix-to-be. It would be a spike, an inch and a half long, wrapping around and around itself until it came to two fine needle points, then Xander would drill holes through the 1/8th inch bases and string a gold chain between them. But for the moment his work just looked like a wooden rod, half an inch across, and it would take him hours of drilling, chip carving, and sanding to get anywhere near that point.

Xander cracked his knuckles and took a deep gulp from his water bottle, preparing to use the 1/8ths inch file until it needed sharpening again, but the hair rising at the back of his neck stopped him. Slowly and carefully Xander turned to the door, expecting Spike with a scowl about the music, or one of the girls hovering on the threshold of the work room, but there was no one there. The door was closed, and his radio was still blaring the rich brassy tones of Louis Armstrong.

Shaking himself out of the sudden funk, Xander turned back to the necklace and movement caught his eye. He didn't see any motion in the wood shed, not even the skittering of a helpful spider, but suddenly the carving of a Fyarl demon with a perplexed expression (Giles had not been appreciative) that had been shelved in the back on the far wall was out front, staring accusingly at him. Xander's skin crawled. He knew enough about the hellmouth to know that little things like this were cause for genuine alarm, but he would be damned if he went running from his own workshop on the account of a moved carving. Anya could've shifted it when she was back there rummaging for a sale.

Goosebumps pimpling his arms, Xander returned to the necklace, filing with the intense care of someone concentrating on something else altogether. His attention was focused on the stock room, ears listening for skittering mice, eyes trained diligently on the necklace, nostrils flaring as he sucked in calm ozone-smelling breaths covered his panic.

The Fyarl fell over, horns bouncing on the poured concrete floor. Xander jumped a foot in the air, stabbed himself with the file and cursed loudly. There would be absolutely no ignoring it now - it knew that Xander had spotted it, and Xander knew it knew - only two things he could do now and he didn't want to face he humiliation of running away screaming like a girl. Casually as he could manage he stood, sticking the bleeding finger in his mouth as he scooted away from the safety of his workbench and made to pick up the fallen Fyarl. "What're you doing out here G-man Junior?" He asked it aloud, trying not to have flashbacks to moving puppets from high school. The statue, fortunately, did not answer him.

It was a pretty solid piece of oak, a full foot tall with thick curling horns and a wrinkled Fyarl hide, but Xander lifted it easily, slinging the thing under an elbow as he made to put it away. With any luck he'd just have a playful Bogart of some variety trying to screw with his mind, but failing that he was holding a very solid chunk of oak with conveniently pointy horns.

Xander cautiously slipped back among the stock, Fyarl held out before him and ready to go back on its shelf. The lights fell, dimming around him as there was the dry rustle of wood shifting behind him. Xander couldn't breathe; he tried to turn around but was pinned in place by fear, not knowing whether to expect one of his sculptures to come to life, his father, the spineless, knife-wielding Paul, or a giant clown. Personally Xander was hoping for the clown.

He couldn't move. He was paralyzed with fear. And the room went black.

Xander sat up with a lurch, woke up panting. The crawling feeling from his dream arched over his skin, blue and cold like electricity and it buried itself in his trembling fingertips.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."

"Gah!" Xander suffered a disorienting moment of half-sleep. He'd woken up in an empty room and Spike was suddenly THERE, right in his line of sight. He'd been staring right at the vampire, but still trapped in the dream hadn't seen him until he was there with a vengeance and Xander suffered slippery vertigo trying to cling to two realities at once. "I don't do jewelry." he gasped, trying to suss things out. Real? Unreal? He didn't do jewelry but Spike didn't wake him up by breathing either.

"Don't have the bone structure for it, love." The vampire responded helpfully.

"I don't MAKE jewelry." Xander snarled, waking up now and not happy about it. The dream or the lack of sleep left him with a tearing orange behind his eyelids and sharpness in his lungs like needles - he wanted to throw up. "Why're you here?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

Xander ran ragged fingers through his hair, scratching away the fuzziness of his mind as he sat up. "About?"

"You sure don't start with the easy questions, do you pet?"

Sometimes talking to spike made him livid and he defaulted to sarcasm. "What are easy questions, Spike? Two plus two? Seventeen minus thirty four? And what time is it anyway?"

"You're getting the hang of it... four, negative seventeen, a little after ten." Spike stared at him from the foot of the couch and Xander noted that he had a black eye. There was a look about him that was almost frightening, sharp and intense - Xander wondered if he was still dreaming.

"Where'd you get the shiner?"

"Fuckin' slayer laid one on me. It'll be gone by morning." Xander nodded, stared dizzily at the vampire until Spike started squirming, or it would have been squirming on anyone else - on Spike squirming was an appealing restlessness that you couldn't take your eyes off of. "It's just... We need to chat, you and I, and I didn't think it should wait until tomorrow's poker game."

"Yeah, you said that. But... fuck, can you sit please? My neck is killing me and the world isn't making huge amounts of sense just now."

"In a minute. I'll sit in a minute. Or... let me go make some coffee." Spike disappeared into the kitchen and left Xander in a bubble of half-waking confusion. Weird, weird guy. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, trying to get his exhausted headache to go away. For all that Spike would tell you he wasn't one to beat around the bush, sometimes conversation with him was like pulling teeth. Xander was almost asleep again by the time he came back, he was dozing upright with his eyes closed and Spike wrapped his hand around a cup that he slurped at blindly. It was creamy and sweet, and Spike was the only person that made it right.

"Good. Thanks. Good." He took a few more sips and the sugar took about a year to revive him, but his brain was slowly working faster and in the correct reality - which was good. With sudden clarity Xander realized that Spike broke into his house, made him his own coffee, and still hadn't actually told him why he was here - he almost laughed. "Spike... why are you here again?"

The manic energy the vampire had been wearing like a cape seemed to slip away from his shoulders and Spike looked suddenly subdued. "Lots of reasons." He went on before Xander could begin to make a frustrated noise, "the first of which is I'm sick of feelin' like a little girl."

Xander was confused as hell and said so, which prompted Spike to sigh heavily and pat his pockets for cigarettes that he wasn't allowed to light. "Look, last night... I shouldn't have kissed you the way that I did, and I shouldn't have... run away after the fact."

Xander stared. Spike seemed suddenly to be speaking in prime numbers, and Xander had always been pretty pathetic in mathematics. The vampire was remarkably withdrawn, and it made Xander realize just how comfortable he'd become in the years they'd known each other. If someone had told him when he met Spike that one day he'd be happy to see him every day and the vampire would be bringing him coffee made exactly the right way he would have laughed himself sick. Spike didn't look at him, hunched and vulnerable and trying desperately to hide it - and Xander couldn't say anything. "I...I don't understand." The vampire looked like a kid on his first date and Xander thought maybe he was getting it all wrong, hallucinating. "I... Look, will you sit the fuck down?"

This made Spike grin, weirdo. The vampire complied, crowding Xander's personal space until Xander had pressed himself against the arm of the couch and didn't have anywhere to go. "I shouldn't have kissed you the way I did," he repeated, "I should've made it last, gotten a taste of you. I've wanted… for so long, and I'm sick of waiting for you to notice."

"H-huh?" He licked suddenly dry lips and felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest in confusion and longing and fear. "I don't... there's not..."

"I figured since you didn't slug me the first time that I could get away with saying that." He said, a strange blend of cheerful, satisfied, and smug enough that Xander wanted to hit him with a two-by-four. "I've been chatting with the witches - they say it's all down to you being a completely oblivious sod, and they would know, but I feel like there's more to it."

Spike's eyes flickered over his bare belly, tracing the ugly red-rope of the scar, and Xander instinctively flinched his arms over his abdomen. He felt trapped, confused, and irritable. Spike didn't make a lot of sense on a normal day, and Xander could feel his hackles prickling defensively, "What's what down to? I don't like people gawping at the big fucking patch of ugly, and what's wrong with that?" He snapped, intensely annoyed.

For a moment Spike looked thoughtful, backed off slowly, his whole body language letting Xander know he could relax - which he didn't do. "Maybe they were right... maybe you just don't see it at all..."

"Don't see WHAT?"

"The fact that I've been trying to catch your attention for years, you dolt. I've never been so fucking frustrated in my life and you've never bloody noticed."

Silence rang through the living room, hanging in the air as a presence so much more powerful than an absence of sound. Xander wondered if the whole world had frozen - Spike was staring at him with frustrated belligerence, like he was terrified of the words being in the open but damned if he'd take them back. The weight of "trying to catch your attention" hung between them, bounding back and forth like a ballistic superball and pinging on emotions of disbelief. Xander didn't know what to do with it, so he choked on his coffee.

When he could breathe again, he rasped out "Are you and Dawn in on this together?"

Spike scowled darkly, "Remind me to eat her liver would you, mate?"

"I take it you'll be passing on the Chianti?" Xander asked waspishly, feeling an intense and irrational sting of betrayal, knowing there would be a barb in here somewhere that would kill him.

"Stop trying to change the subject!"

The sound of Xander's fingernails scrambling on the upholstery was almost painful. He launched himself over the arm of the couch and to his feet, meaning to just walk away, but Spike caught him by the wrist and Xander made a frustrated noise like a boiling tea kettle. This conversation wasn't right, and he wanted to get away from it before it could go farther. Xander missed the Spike of forty-eight hours ago when they'd been dismantling a tentacled jello demon and there wasn't any weird tension cracking around his living room.

"Which subject is that, Spike? The one where you claim... whatever it was you claimed. The one where you and Dawn are up to something that's going to turn my brain into Gouda, or the one where you think I... actually, I have no idea what you think I should be saying, so do me a favor, and don't expect me to know what the hell you're talking about."

He wanted to go hide in his woodshop, wanted to call Willow and ask her if she knew what was happening and yell at her for not warning him. He wanted a shirt because Spike was boring holes in him with his eyes and he couldn't have felt more exposed if he was naked. The vampire was staring in stony silence, holding him by the wrist so he couldn't get away and staring him in the eye while Xander tried to tug away like a frightened deer in a trap. "Spike..." he pleaded, "What do you want from me?"

"It would be nice if you would stop running from me." He said casually, edging closer while Xander edged away, feeling ridiculous but unable to control it.

"You CAN'T be serious."

Spike's hand slid up his wrist, smoothing over his elbow and back down. They wrestled, trained, and patrolled together all the time, physical contact was perfectly normal between them but this was different and Xander shivered. "I can't believe you haven't noticed." Spike said, wondering and desolate - he realized he was being cruel and it was like a knife to the gut, except it wasn't because Xander knew EXACTLY how that felt. "I mean, at first I thought I was going crazy - no offense - because it does run in the family, but I'm apparently crazy in your direction. I can't help it, and I don't want to."

"Heh." Xander said weakly, but Spike hardly seemed to notice. The vampire seemed hypnotized and while Xander didn't want to hear it, he couldn't bring himself to interrupt either.

"I tried to be delicate about it, because Christ knows humans are finicky about that sort of thing - I tried dropping hints and being subtle, being bloody soft, but you spend all your time locked up with your tools and your nightmares and you never figured it out."

"Spike..." he pleaded, "please don't do this to me I... don't tell me these things. I just... I don't want to know."

"But I want to tell you, so you're going to listen. Xander I thought I was going bug-fuck insane so I deserve the courtesy of a little listen." Spike said, suddenly angry, but he barely tightened his grip, and that was more than Xander could say for any of his previous lovers. "I stalked you for months, didn't do it subtly at all, and you went and dated that BASTARD that did... that to you."

"That... long?" Xander could feel the scar throbbing but he met Spike's gaze, didn't look at it, tried like hell not to flinch. "You were... that's why you were there?"

Spike shrugged, suddenly guilty looking, "I was hoping to ruin your date. It was either that or join Willow and Dawn in a monthly unrequited-crush-on-Xander club." Xander flinched. "I've never forgiven myself for not ruining your little tête-à-tête sooner."

"No... no way." Xander muttered distractedly, his free hand doing it's best to cover the damage. That look was back in Spike's eyes, the one he couldn't bring himself to carve, the one that made him remember. "I mean... I buy trying to ruin things; I totally buy that but… I don't believe you. It's just not possible."

"So you're not... things changed after..." Spike made a helpless gesture that Xander flinched from. "I've always thought you were mad at me for not being there when I could've stopped it."

"Mad!" Xander gasped out, Spike was so off base it was laughable. "I'm, Spike I'm so fucking glad you showed up that there's no room for mad. I've never been mad or even annoyed. I was... you saved my life, why the hell did you think I was mad?"

"Things changed after that." Xander couldn't suppress a noise of exasperation. "You got so distant - started spending all your time in that fucking woodshed and you just disappeared. I thought it was my fault."

"We have a standing poker night!" Xander protested.

"It's changed." Spike insisted hotly, "You... backed off and I thought..."

"You fucking narcissist!" Xander had felt helpless, he remembered the feeling of betrayal with painful clarity because humanity had disappointed him. Normal, gentle humanity had betrayed him thoroughly by being exactly what he'd spent eight years fighting. It hadn't been fair, and there had to be something wrong with him, something that made even humans want to rip his guts out. "Someone decided to take a closer look at my liver and you thought... what, I'm petty enough to worry about a thing like timing?"

"If you're not... if you're not just furious with me for letting that happen then why the hell don't you let me get near you - it?"

Xander gave up. He let his arm drop to his side, giving Spike the best view of the fucking thing that he could and glaring defiantly. He was furious now, but not for the reasons that Spike thought. "Is that what you want? Is that what'll make you happy? Take a good fucking look, would you, because this is why Willow stopped setting me up on dates, and why I lost several feet of intestine, and why it's easier to carve demons than look at humans. Are you happy now that you can stare to your heart's content?"

"No, love. No I'm not." Spike reached out gently, voice soft and pained as he touched Xander just below his belly button. Xander closed his eyes, not daring to look at Spike's pale hand on his warped flesh. "I'm the reason Red stopped settin' you up, and no, I'm not happy. Seeing you hurting will never make me happy."

"No," Xander protested sharply, opening his eyes and glaring at Spike fiercely, but the vampire didn't move his hand; let it press into Xander's skin where no one else had ever. Xander jerked away.

"No?"

"No. People don't have this conversation. This is fucking ridiculous. These aren't things you just... SAY. Even if you do like me, which I still can't believe, and even if I love it when you make me coffee this... isn't something people say."

"I more than like you, pet." Spike growled softly, jerking him closer until they were face to face and Xander could smell the smoke and leather on Spike's skin. "If all you think about are those damned carvings, then all I ever think about is you. I had to tell you, had to make you see it and you're being a stubborn bastard about it, but I shouldn't have expected any different. The girls are worried, I'm worried, and I'm not about to spend another year watching you forget to take care of yourself and having no one. Even if it's not me you deserve—"

"Stop." He would never understand how Spike could just say whatever the hell was on his mind. The vampire was good at it, Xander less so without half a gallon of alcohol in his system. The living room was claustrophobic, cramped and far too airless. "Just... stop." He yanked himself away, leaving the vampire standing stranded by his couch and his coffee mug while he ran away to the "fucking woodshed" knowing that the vampire wouldn't follow him.

The dream chased him and Xander felt a shiver of fear crawl up his spine, but it was a choice between the shed and Spike, and Xander had a feeling that the shed wouldn't be nearly the mindfuck that Spike was turning out to be. It hurt. It felt like he'd lost his best friend because Spike had done something unforgivable, he didn't exactly know what that was, but it was painful, and Xander couldn't stand around and be looked through longer.

He threw some Duke Ellington in the stereo, turned the volume up, and stood in the shed feeling like a fucking moron. The "A Line" was buzzing around his brain, mocking him, but Xander didn't dare turn it off. With a sigh of defeat he plunked down at his work bench and pulled the alder closer to him, not bothering to pick up a file but letting the grit of the wood under his hands soothe him. The smell of a hundred different woods surrounded him, blending sweetly and grounding him, allowing him to breathe again.

He was so fucking tired, and so fucking mad he didn't know what to think. He knew he was being ridiculous but he couldn't get himself under control. He felt like his privacy had been invaded, like Spike had somehow slipped past his paranoid barriers of injury and insecurity and without his permission the vampire had made him small, and lonely. Even his quiet cocoon seemed over-exposed and cold, but it was nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the cold fingers trailing against the scar he'd been hiding behind.

Xander blinked in surprise while his finger subconsciously traced the lines of he Gnarl. He hadn't been HIDING exactly, he'd been healing, he'd made a strategic retreat from the battlefields of love and happiness, but he hadn't been HIDING. There was only so much being the victim of demonic dating that a person could take before they gave up. Except the last was purely human and so much worse than the preying mantis or the mummy, or Anya. And Spike was his friend, had always been there rescuing him from himself.

Spike was his best friend, the first person he thought of when there was a monster movie marathon playing at the Sunnydale theaters, the person he patrolled with, the person he fell asleep on when he got completely plastered at the Bronze one night, and if he let himself think about it, if he pulled away some of his very carefully constructed mental barriers he could almost see it. Their long-standing Saturday Night poker game, cigarettes and beer when they needed quiet company, a close, quiet relationship that Xander hadn't managed to 'what if' out of existence. What if Spike hurt him? What if he got hit by a truck, or crushed by an I-beam? What if Spike never hurt him?

He never really had, barring a minor concussion in high school and some rather freakish advice about the Army, Spike had never hurt him. He'd doted on Xander with a tenderness that he'd never displayed with Buffy, played with him, let Xander cajole him into running and fetching snacks and sodas and beers and whatever else he wanted when Xander was tired, or feeling silly. They were friends, good friends, they were good friends before Xander got stabbed, and he was willing to fuck it up because he was terrified of fucking it up.

But was it any surprise in the face of such an unprecedented bombardment that he hadn't noticed? Not even Willow with her big-eyed affection managed to be so plainly willing to be whatever Xander needed. Was it, for that matter, any sort of a surprise that Xander loved it? He loved the attention, wrapped himself up in it, pretended that it was no different than the girls' pampering, and kept Spike an arm's length away.

Xander groaned - it wasn't often that he felt he had something in common with Buffy.

Spike had been so contrary to what he usually sought, but what he usually sought usually sought to kill him, so contrary was good. The vampire was good, too good to be true and therefore untouchable, well out of Xander's league and more deserving of beautiful, special people with powers and imagination, like Buffy, or Drusilla, or anybody else that was more important than a promoted construction worker with a scar. But Xander always had a thing for the things he couldn't reach.

He was a fucking idiot. He'd made his life into Not Thinking About it, he'd made his life into painful, perfunctory, masturbation and heavy doses of self loathing - he made his life into a wreck for fear. Paralyzing fear of pity, and rejection. He was a moron.

Xander's hands were full of splinters where he'd been smoothing the rough edges of the Gnarl over and over, unconsciously searching for flaws. He knew he could be dense, Blackwood dense, ironwood dense, but this was just absurd. He risked a glance at the maple in the corner and his mouth tightened in a line of resolve.

Steeling himself for a big manly apology followed by groveling, begging, self-recrimination, and whatever else it took for Spike to forgive him his stupidity. Xander had no idea how long he'd been out here brooding, but it was long enough for the stereo to have cycled through Duke Ellington, and Count Basie to be crooning the soft harmonious Boswell Sisters as they sung about the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Part of him dreaded Seeing Spike so soon after he'd acted like such an ass - Spike had surprised, confused and then infuriated him with his frightening candor, but that was hardly an excuse and Xander wanted to kick himself.

His stomach churned with nerves as he crept into his own home, slipping through the back door and cringing around the corner as though the more repentant and self-effacing he was, the less disgusted Spike would be. Which worked in theory, except the vampire wasn't there, and feeling strangely deflated Xander slunk into his kitchen. Spike had poured the coffee into a carafe and tucked a note under it. Cautiously, afraid it might explode, Xander picked it up.

"Sorry - Didn't mean to upset you. We'll talk later. Spike." In the vampire's incongruously neat hand - Xander wanted to curl up and die of extreme assholism.

Instead, he climbed the stairs, brushed his teeth, swallowed a prescription dose of Xanex, and crawled into bed.

His dreams were fitful and shifting, like cats hunting fowl. Spike and the woodshed chased each other like Ahab and the Whale, Buffy tutted at him from the top of a mountain of books while Willow and Tara braided their hair in that peculiar, secretive intimate way that they had. Drusilla kissed him on his cheek, her lips slick and dead like fish. A wooden Anyanka thrust a knife in his gut and twisted. They were spider dreams, the kind you don't realize you're having until they skitter away and the motion leaves you on the vertiginous precipice between sleep and waking.

Xander woke, drug groggy and with a mouth like cotton. He felt his eyes drift open, felt them scan the face of the alarm clock and couldn't remember why his brain had come unplugged. He was in the bathroom when everything came back online and he nearly missed the bowl. Xander suffered a fresh wave of self-loathing and hardly had to justify another shower under the weight of it. He spent a solid fifteen minutes scrubbing himself raw and another fifteen picking at the splinters in his palms before his hands were throbbing and he realized that stupidity couldn't be washed away.

Still feeling like a heel, he called Willow at the Magic Box, asking for her assistance in his self-flagellation.

"Rosenberg/Maclay."

"I am a big, dumb, shithead."

"It's okay, Buffy explained that you spilled a latte and that's where that funky stain is from.

Xander took a minute to adjust to Willow speak, flailing until that reference snapped into place and he made an indignant noise. "Hey! Buffy blamed that on me?"

"Not that I believe her. What's up? Why are you a big poophead?"

"Spike." Willow made a strangled noise. "I'm a big OBLIVIOUS poophead and I want to know how you ever forgave me for doing to you what I've been doing to him."

"Which is?" Willow tried meekly.

"Don't play coy, Wills, please? I don't think I'm ready to verbalize what a fucking moron I am and… hey, um, am I on speaker phone?"

There was a beep. "Nope."

"How do any of you stand me?"

He could practically feel Willow shrug, "It's part of why we love you, I guess. Not that refusing to see what's in front of your face isn't really irritating - because it is, but we do love you."

"Thanks."

"How bad was it?"

"Bad. It was very, very bad." He told her, she cringed in all the right places, which made him feel better. Then she accused him of being a poophead and forgave him all at once. Spike should have known better, she said, than to spring that on him without letting him wake up first. Or better still, without letting him get a few hours of sleep.

Willow always managed to make him feel infinitely worse or better about himself, and Xander counted himself lucky that she usually used her powers for good. He was in a better mood when they hung up, but a full day of nothing to do loomed before him and made his spirits sink again.

Xander consigned himself to another day in the "fucking woodshed", finishing the Gnarl and feeling guilty. He changed into actual clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, and padded out back, hoping the Andrews Sisters would perk him up before tonight's poker game. If there was a poker game. The thought of having fucked up badly enough to cancel weekly poker made him sick and Xander felt a stab of unadulterated grief that left him gasping. If Spike had a cell phone Xander would call, tell his friend everything and fall on his mercy like the pathetic worm that he was - but Spike didn't have a cell phone, and Xander wondered if he'd see him again any time soon, if ever.

Head swimming, Xander swung by the kitchen, grabbed a few beers for the mini cooler, and re-read Spike's note. There was hope there, at least, a promise of later, and Xander carried it out to the workshop with him to sit beside the maple block as he worked on yet another demonic memory.

* * *

Time moved in a slow, complicated way of here then gone. The beer seemed to drain quickly, but every time it crossed Xander's mind to leave the shop for a sandwich and a cup of coffee he got side tracked by a five minute project and an hour later still hadn't moved. He was working with a vengeance, filing, scraping, chipping, sanding, and occasionally bleeding without stop. It took him this way sometimes, something that frustrated the girls to no end; sometimes once he started something it consumed his mind to the exclusion of everything else and today Xander was more than willing to be consumed.

Xander puffed air out over the emerging Gnarl, blowing a gust of sawdust out of its mouth. The world had been swimming in and out of focus for hours as his brain drifted from the knots of a shoulder to encompass the room. Xander was dizzy with the act of staring into thin air and letting his subconscious adjust itself with secret clicking and whirring of his rusty mental cogs. He sat back with a groan and realized he'd been stationary for hours, mindlessly sanding the curl of joints and long-stick limbs with increasingly finer grit. His back ached, his hands were stiff and painful, his bare feet were covered in a quarter-inch of itching red sawdust, but he felt amazing.

The Gnarl stared back at him, crouched, snarling, animalistic, mere seconds from fleeing back into the shadows of it's cave. It looked caught between terror and contemplation of the next bit of skin it would delicately slice away to nibble. Xander didn't have active nightmares about that particular demon anymore, he'd seen too much to have nightmares more horrifying than the mundane like showing up to History in his underwear, despite having graduated EIGHT YEARS ago which were more frustrating than anything. He didn't have that moment of horrific heart-stopping, bowel loosening, ice cold terror anymore because that feeling had become so common that he'd developed a form of the dreaded Sunnydale Syndrome. They all had. This was his way of acknowledging the monsters they worked to kill every day, his way of exorcising the burden of terror they each inspired before Buffy cut their heads off or beat them to death with her delicate fists.

Xander remembered the Gnarl with ghastly clarity. It had, after all, paralyzed his best friend and tried to eat her skin while she was still attached to it. Xander remembered the familiar feeling of helplessness while she lay there and he couldn't MOVE. Now he could put the fucker on a shelf, out of sight, out of his mind at last—Anya could photograph it, put it on the website and sell it if she liked, but Xander had the best end of the bargain. Xander could let it go.

He toweled a smooth wax varnish over it, letting the dull red of the wood keep it's naturally dull luster. Xander always tried to use the wood grain, sometimes the hidden lines and unanticipated cracks worked to his advantage, sometimes they didn't - Xander could only hope that the fine crack running the underside of the Gnarl's thigh would be noticed by only the demons damnable mother. He could probably seal it with some of the sawdust and a bit of glue, but he was feeling lazy and artistically belligerent - it was good enough, and if he changed his mind he could fix it later.

Xander stood sharply, groaning as his entire body creaked; joints stiff and stubborn from having sat for so long popped in protest. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't bothered to eat today and the room spun dizzily while his brain struggled for an anchor. Sometimes he suspected he spent so much time with the dust and resin that it would one day coat him and he would become a statue, trapped in his own woodshed. And of course none of the girls or Spike would find him because they couldn't bear to come back here. He as getting old, aching in places he'd never had trouble with before as his mind skittered across old action figures and stiffly articulated joints - he was Mister Oblivious, the layman's superhero. Tara's healing balm would certainly have its work cut out for it tonight - maybe he could get Spike to massage it into his back later...

Xander shut the thought down automatically, then forced himself to pause. He turned the idea over in his mind, inspecting it curiously as he felt a fierce blush turn his face cherry red. To be touched, appreciated. Sometimes he ached with the wanting of someone in his life, and he'd been too fucking stupid to let himself have it. But Spike had changed things, demanded things change, and Xander wondered if he'd ever be able to turn those thoughts off again.

It was official. He was going crazy - he was stupid and crazy and should be put out of his misery as swiftly as possible.

Hefting the new Gnarl statuette Xander cracked his neck and sucked in a deep calming breath through his nose. There was no one here to see him standing like an idiot so he took full advantage of the ability while his soggy/saturated brain ticked three times slower than usual. Louis Jordan was bemoaning chartreuse hair at the edges of his hearing; the shop smelled heavily of sawdust, resin, varnish, and a cracking undertone of ozone that made Xander blink suspiciously from his state of semi-coherency.

Finishing something always made him slightly loopy, as though his concentration, once broken, was a loose sail line, whipping and flailing in a storm of confusion until he could sleep and get things back under control. His ability to think clearly might be somewhat inhibited, but he knew he'd never noticed that smell in the shed before, the sharp heaviness of a rainstorm on his olfactory palate, and wondered where the heck it had come from. He wasn't far-gone enough to actively follow his nose because sometimes the shed smelled inexplicably of cigarette smoke, or (somewhat more explicably) like Anya's perfume and he didn't bother to sniff those out, but as he moved towards the dark end of the shed to find a spot for the new Gnarl, the scent got stronger.

Xander cleared a space between a sickly-looking birch Kappa and a walnut Kyriel, careful not to stab himself on the miniature cactus demon again. He'd already met his injury quota for the day when he slipped with a file and it bit into the base of his thumb, he didn't need ay cactus holes on top of that. It was pretty nasty, something he'd have to be careful with for a few days, but he hadn't felt like stopping so he'd simply slapped a piece of duct tape over it and kept filing - the duct tape was gummy and would be no fun to remove, but it worked better than Band-Aids and Xander was willing to take what he could get. His hand throbbed.

Xander felt a shiver of fear run up his spine, nestling in his shoulder blades and giving him that familiar sensation of having a target painted there. His lizard brain hissed nervously in the dark, but he was a Sunnydaler, and this was his safe place. He didn't think about it, which turned out to be a mistake.

For just a moment Xander felt something there with him, a presence lurking in the stacks behind him and he turned warily, skin crawling as his brain gave him helpful nightmare images. There was nothing there. For a moment he brushed it off as tired craziness, a result of poor sleep and the fact that he'd been in this little room for hours, breathing in varnish and surrounded by leering, slavering demons - but there, in the corner of his eye there was movement. It was just a shadow brushing against the air, but enough to have every hair follicle on his body prickling. Xander held his breath nervously.

There was a dry rustling of wood, a hollow thud as something fell off a shelf. He was shaking, every muscle tense with apprehension. The loopiness had fled his brain completely, leaving him with a sharp feeling of surreality, helpless and claustrophobic in this tiny corner of the room. He couldn't move. Slowly, so slowly he thought his heart would pound out of his chest before he made it, Xander turned towards the exit. There was nothing in his way. With a sigh of relief, feeling like the biggest loser ever, he headed for the door.

That's when the slayer dropped in front of him.

Xander screamed hoarsely, falling over backwards and scrambling for a weapon while she shifted curiously, watching him with intense wooden eyes. The First Slayer - a full sized creation wrought from Blackwood and ebony, every carved muscle bulging in sharp relief, every intricate vein pumping with the thrill of the hunt. Xander had even given her a stone knife, which she waved threateningly in his direction, the same knife she'd use to carve out his heart. He was mindless with fear as he scrambled backwards, trying to edge into open space, but she had him trapped in the shed, crouching warily between him and the exit.

His own creation, moving with frightening grace that her wooden nature had no apparent effect on. Xander had been part of this woman once, six years ago she'd murdered him in a dream so he'd carved her, lovingly, accurately: giving her sharp features no softness, giving her the set jaw and dark eyes of a warrior. She was going to kill him.

His slayer lunged, and Xander flung up an arm to defend himself, feeling the bone crack as her forearm came crashing down like a baseball bat. He felt all of the air leave his lungs, felt himself scream but couldn't hear it, couldn't hear Rosemary Clooney crooning in the background, couldn't breathe.

The statue backed off, staring at him curiously while Xander scrambled to his feet, ears ringing with the silence. He gently cradled his broken arm, though he couldn't feel the pain of it yet. She circled around him, pads of her wooden feet scraping the concrete, and he edged away, his legs moving in tandem to hers as they tracked each other across the room. He couldn't take his eyes off her, prayed he hadn't been forgetful, prayed that there wouldn't be an unexpected piece of scrap or an empty M&Ms bag but the prayers went unanswered. Xander felt the leg of his pants catch something, knew it would be bad even as his foot came down. Clamps, he'd been fouled up by errant wood clamps and now he was going to die. A line of fire raced across the top of his foot as he wondered who would find the mess, probably Buffy - she seemed to stumble across a dead body every week - wondered how you killed a wooden slayer - regretted that he wouldn't be able to see Dawnie at the funeral.

Xander toppled over, his hip hit the dusty concrete floor with a bang, the slayer lunged. He was dead. Noise came back in a rush, Rosemary Clooney and the eerie wooden shifting of the slayer drowned out by a more primal noise. Roaring, a screaming nightmare shriek coming from the doorway. Xander swung from the ground with his good arm but the Slayer was turning towards Spike and the hit barely connected. Still, it scraped all the skin off his knuckles and the little voice inside Xander that stayed sane and sarcastic berated him for trying to punch a block of wood while he yelped in surprised pain. Spike was here, the voice told him, Spike would fix things. "What are you DOING here?" he gasped, grateful, confused, and more than happy to let Spike fight this one for him.

The vampire didn't answer, too occupied with the first ever hunter of his kind. Xander couldn't breathe, watched horrified and fascinated as they circled in the tiny shed, the slayer slashed at Spike, who dodged and ripped claws against her stomach in a way that made Xander wince. Against the grain, his sane-brain commented. They lunged and broke away, circled, repeated the dance, and Xander could see the endless pattern of it, needed to do something. He panted in dark anticipation as splinters scattered through the room and blood flew in glittering droplets.

Finally, Spike dodged away. He crouched warily about three feet from Xander as the Slayer hunched across the room, nostrils flaring as he scented for weakness, or god knew. His game face obscured his usual baritone, emerging in a growl of frustration "How the fuck do you kill this thing?"

"I don't know... I don't know..." Xander wailed, feeling at any moment that he'd be running like a chicken with it's head cut off, circling and circling uselessly inside the shed and spattering everyone with arterial spray. "I don't know what made it!"

"You did!" Spike grunted as the combatants sprang back together with a thud. The vampire landed a blow that would have broken Xander's knuckle, but didn't splinter the wood.

"Well, yeah, but I didn't do THIS."

Spike's head made contact with a wall so hard it shook. With a growl he pushed off it, throwing the wooden slayer off balance and onto the ground, twisting like an eel to get the upper hand. "Oh no... no you couldn't have..." The vampire groaned in frustration and exhaustion, then grunted sharply when the slayer dug wooden fingers into his calf. "Tell me you didn't fucking carve the Telltrumank from three months ago?"

"It's cherry..." Xander said inanely - they were up and circling again. He'd finished it just before he started the Gnarl.

"Well fucking go and get it! Moron!"

Xander lunged to his feet and scrambled through storage racks, taking a sharp right at the M'Fashnik and racing to the Slayer's corner. Or what used to be her corner, before she started moving around and trying to kill him. Xander giggled a bit hysterically as his eyes scanned the shelves in that area for the Telltrumank carving, spotting it almost immediately - he was fairly sure he hadn't carved it with glowing violet eyes.

Skin crawling in fear and revulsion, Xander picked it up, arm screaming in resistance when he tried to use it. Spike snarled out of his sight and Xander ran back at full speed, crashing into a shelf that tore at his arm. He rebounded like a practiced running-back and skittered to a stop when Spike and the Slayer came into view. He had her trapped against his body, holding her still with sharp fingers in her hair and on her shoulders. Xander stared, seeing the vampire in his friend for the first time in years.

"DESTROY IT!" Spike roared, the slayer was clawing at him with one arm, the other hung uselessly at her side though Xander could see no damage, she was kicking and squirming, hard face glaring in arrogance belied by terror in a way that Xander had never seen before. He lifted the Telltrumank high as he could and brought it down again with everything he had, watching her stare at him in hope and pain.

Years of fighting demons, years of hauling hunks of dense wood, years of frustrated pushups in his office, years of hard labor and a hard life brought the little statue down on a fault line, shattering it. Xander panted with adrenaline, holding a stump of cherry wood that had once been a demon's foot. He noted very dimly that the Slayer had stopped struggling, that there were splinters in his hands, that Spike was struggling to detangle himself, and he was too tired to care about any of it. Xander fell over. Spike managed to pull himself away from the slayer who had returned to being an inanimate block of hardwood, and went about picking up the pieces of the Telltrumank. Rosemary was still crooning Tenderly, years away from them, and Xander slowly began to realize that the whole stupid nightmare had taken less than three minutes.

The track flipped, soft mellow trumpet filtered across from dusty speakers as Nat King Cole began telling them about a strange, enchanted boy. Xander started giggling in spite of himself, adrenaline fading back into tired loopiness.

"Your fucking music," Spike said darkly, "drives me up the goddamned wall."

But he didn't turn it off. Instead he flopped down beside Xander, patted down his pockets, and lit a well-deserved cigarette.

"Heh." Spike shot him a look that dared him to comment, which Xander ignored. Instead he said with feeling, "I am an idiot."

"Damned right you are! What were you thinking carving an idol of Telltrumank? Didn't you know his idols have the power to bring inanimate objects to life? AND it's a full moon, which always means trouble. You're fucking lucky it didn't wake up something nastier than a slayer."

"Like last week's jello demon." Xander said with automatic sarcasm and immediately regretted it when Spike shot him a disappointed look.

"Or a vampire."

"I've never carved a vampire." Xander said softly, regretting that too. But he had carved worse, he'd carved the thing that drove a vampire to jump off a poorly constructed tower, he'd carved hundreds of little evils, and a few large ones - it could have been much worse. There was a long silence between them while Spike smoked his cigarette down to the filter and Xander didn't dare look him in the eye. He stared at the cigarette instead, watching the bright cherry of it consume tiny bits of white paper that transformed almost immediately into a fine grey ash. Spike lit another.

"Look, I'm an idiot." Xander said again, hoping Spike would understand what he meant as he watched the vampire's angry profile. "And I'm sorry."

Spike didn't speak, but blue grey eyes flickered curiously in his direction. Xander had an incredible desire for more than a flicker. He wanted to smooth the lines around Spike's mouth and forehead, wanted to capture the sharpness of his nose and the curve of his mouth apple wood, wanted to say this before he forgot how. He spat it all out in a panicked rush before he lost the courage. "About everything. I'm sorry... I wouldn't listen last night, and I'm really sorry I've been so fucking dense for two years. I'm sorry I WASTED so much time. And… I mean, I'm sorry about the Telltrumank too, but let's face it; we knew something like that was gonna happen eventually. And thank you for saving my life again. It's just... mostly I'm sorry that I hurt you. I didn't... I never meant for you to join the 'unrequited Xander-crush club'."

Spike blinked very slowly, turned to look at him with an appallingly ironic wooden expression - Xander could probably carve more emotion into his eyes. "What exactly are you trying to say, pet?"

Xander opened and shut his mouth for a moment while he watched the woodenness melt into grim resignation. He searched for words that wouldn't sound too girly or irreparably moronic then realized that he'd bypassed girly and moronic years ago and Spike hadn't seemed to mind then. He was exhausted, bleeding, and had been an idiot so many times in the last decade that he could say whatever was on his mind, and did. "You're my best friend." He started stubbornly, "and sometimes you INFURIATE me." Spike looked very confused now, and happy - weirdo. "But I LIKE it when you break into my house and make me coffee, and I'm trying to tell you that I'm sorry I've been a fucking moron, and you're right, and I guess I like you too even if that sounds really lame and… damn it Spike, help me out here."

When he ran out of steam Spike laughed at him.

"Not exactly the reaction I think I was hoping for." Xander noted.

"Idiot." Spike grinned broadly and Xander felt himself blushing again.

"Sorry."

The vampire leaned into Xander's cringe of self-disgust and pressed their lips together like Xander had been wanting him to. He was very grateful that one of them knew how to go about the non-fluke first-kiss business, and set out to enjoy it. Dry, cool, smoky and soft, Xander let his eyes dropped closed, felt his lips part and let his tongue linger against Spike's mouth before pressing inside. Spike's mouth moved softly on his, slick tongue darting out to taste and explore the space behind Xander's teeth as the kiss went back and forth, communicating in a way Xander would never manage verbally. He wanted to pull the vampire closer, wrap himself in the smoke and leather smell of him - he reached out and his whole body THROBBED.

"Fuck" They pulled apart, Xander was panting, eyes squeezed shut against tears of pain, "Fuck...god..."

"What? What!?"

Spike sounded panicked, which was funny in a bleak sort of way. Xander half-chuckled, half moaned in pain. He'd forgotten all about it, and that was truly a sign of the times and how ridiculous his life had been up to this point that he'd managed to forget. "How's this for stupid?" he asked wryly, "I haven't had sex or anything like it in over three years and all I can think about is going to the hospital."

Spike's head thumped the shelf they were leaning against. "Fucking humans."

"Sorry."

"Yeah yeah." Spike said, climbing to his feet and helping Xander onto his. "You look like you got hit by a truck."

"Well, we can always claim we were gay-bashed."

They staggered into the truck, laughing darkly while Xander tried not to let the sudden nausea get to him. Spike drove.

* * *

Xander's cast was lime green. The guys at work ribbed him about it, and one evening Spike asked him why he was trying to compete with the Granny Smiths at the supermarket so Xander started whistling "Don't Sit under the Apple Tree" until Spike tackled him. It hadn't taken long.

The hospital had worked him over almost as thoroughly as the Slayer, he'd been poked and prodded at, stitched up on the top of his foot, had his shoulder sewn shut, and because it was his umpteenth visit for similar injuries they'd read him an impressive lecture about taking care of himself while they pumped him full of lidocaine and set his arm. The shed had been officially de-possessed, they'd burned the Telltrumank remains in a metal trash can on the drive way, Willow had wandered through the space with a bundle of burning sage while Tara swept out the blood and sawdust from the night he'd finished the Gnarl. Xander and Spike sat side-by-side on the stoop while the witches worked, neither of them spoke, but it was a comfortable silence.

After a week with a broken arm Xander began to feel the wrench of not being able to work in the shed. His arm no longer ached so fiercely, and he kept thinking that he could hold things in clamps and still work, but he didn't want sawdust in any of his stitches, or under his cast. It was almost painfully frustrating, but sawdust would be worse. Xander was irritable and impossible to be around until Spike moved in and the situation improved for everyone - on the days that Xander came home frustrated and annoyed by work the vampire was just waking up and it didn't matter that he couldn't relax in the shed because Spike was a VERY effective and much less dusty distraction.

On Saturdays, though, Xander left his vampire to sleep and sat in the shed once the morning cartoons were over. He'd turn pieces of untouched wood over in his hands, imagining what he might make them, and he examined the Slayer.

The damage was surprisingly minimal. Spike explained to him in the waiting room of Sunnydale Memorial Hospital that it had been like fighting a person with very hard skin - a block of wood and a real slayer. It felt like hitting a tree, but she reacted like a normal girl, no concussive splintering when he'd broken her arm, no wood in his gums when he bit into her carotid artery, but there hadn't been sap either.

Xander listened to this recounting until he realized that Spike had technically killed his third slayer, and kissed him to keep him from reaching the same conclusion.

She wasn't really his work anymore. Only someone that knew him very well would be able to spot it because the chisel lines were his, the occasional rough file mark, the grain of her face, that was all his, but he never would have carved this. The first slayer was a monster in his mind, a terrifying shadow figure that had ripped his heart out and left him with a gaping nothingness of fear. This sculpture was that and more - she was fierce and primitive still, but the cold certainty was gone from her face. Her toes curled, one leg poised to kick, one arm hung limply by her side—broken, or dislocated—the other scrabbled furiously at her invisible murderer; but it was the face that startled him. It was hard and defiant, half-snarl of rage, half grimace of agony. Xander hadn't actively carved the fiercely pointed teeth that hid behind her curling lip, but it wasn't a surprise that they were there.

It made chills crawl up his spine and made him fear her more than ever.

Spike found him there when the sun set, creeping in behind him and making Xander jump when he was suddenly being hugged. Spike's bony chin dug into his shoulder as he asked "You been staring at that thing all day?"

"I watched cartoons and stared at the maple for a while." Xander returned cheekily, prompting a sardonic snort from the vampire.

Spike nuzzled into his neck, pulling him in closer as they leaned together, soaking up the physical contact. "That thing gives me the willies, I can tell you that."

"Why? I thought you'd like the idea of a Slayer like that. She's… suspended in death."

Gentle fingers carded through his hair, "She's all alone."

Xander nodded distantly, trying to see her with the vampire's eyes. He saw something else entirely. "I could really go for some curry."

Spike pushed a kiss to his temple and dragged him out of the shed, "Weirdo."

* * *

By Monday Xander had decided what to do about the slayer. He called Brian, his contact in New England and asked him to get his hands on maple, a whole tree if possible, maybe more.

Brian called back Wednesday and let him know that he could get a shipment but it would take about five weeks. Xander assured him that this would be fine because his cast wouldn't be off until then anyway. The plaster itched furiously and the only thing Xander could do was stick a wire hanger down there to help. The stitches were a different story.

That night Spike took them out with his teeth and Xander came so hard he blacked out.

* * *

The shipment showed up two days before the cast came off and Xander laughed himself to tears when he saw it. Not only did Brian send him enough for the project idea that had hatched in his mind, he sent along a case of maple syrup - twenty four clanking bottles and a cheeky note about not knowing what he meant by maple.

They celebrated the removal of the cast with enough sticky-syrup fun that Xander had to buy new sheets.

There was a hard moment when Xander started working in the woodshed again. Spike wasn't thrilled but the idea was burning in his mind and making his fingers itch for a chisel. The vampire had been furious when Xander kissed him on the nose and locked him out. He brooded about it for a few days, refusing to speak to or touch Xander for two whole days while Xander tried to explain that the restriction wasn't permanent, only that he wanted what he was working on to be a surprise. Sometimes Spike could be as stubbornly stupid as he could and it wasn't until he'd started threatening to stab him with chisels and locking himself in the shed overnight that the vampire offered a compromise.

Xander spent a few hours in the shed every evening of the week, but he was done after dinner or Spike would kick the door in. He could spend as much time as he damned well pleased on Saturdays, but Sundays belonged to Spike and Spike alone. Every Monday for the duration of the project Xander sidled into work exhausted but grinning, so every Monday at the water cooler his co-workers ribbed him mercilessly and openly speculated about the new flame in his life. Xander didn't give any answers, only smiled secretively at them and knew that none of them could possibly imagine Spike.

It took well over two months. Even working as obsessively as he had been it took him ten weeks to finish. For those ten weeks his hands were stiff and calloused, his back ached, his feet had roughly a million splinters in them, but he had Spike there to feed him, and pamper him, and rub healing-salve wherever he decided he needed it. It was a change, a pleasant one he wanted never to end, but now he was done and he was thrilled. Elated, and utterly satisfied with the work.

He'd put the finishing touches on Friday afternoon, planning for a weekend which he figured he'd need once he told Spike that he would be allowed back in the shed. With a grin of anticipation, Xander dusted himself off, swept out the shed, and went inside to find his lover. Xander was patient, he ate his dinner under the vampire's watchful gaze like a good boy, washed the dishes, and made sure the sun was down before he mentioned it.

"Hey, Spike?"

"Hm?"

"Can I blindfold you and get you to come somewhere with me?"

The blonde blinked that familiar slow expression of surprise stealing over his face for just a second, but he recovered remarkably well, smirking lasciviously. "I'll 'come' anywhere you tell me to, Xand. Don't need a blindfold for that."

"Bad puns, Spike." He warned, but was grinning. Spike was intrigued so Xander pulled his work tie out of his pant's pocket and slid it across Spike's eyes. "You'll know where we're going." He whispered directly into Spike's ear, the vampire shivered. "But I need you not to be able to see."

Xander led him carefully, though he knew Spike wouldn't trip over anything - the vampire probably had a better sense of what was near him blindfolded than Xander EVER did, but he was still cautious. Once in the woodshed, Spike clearly had an eyebrow raised under the blindfold, but he didn't say anything, curiously silent even as Xander turned him to face the work bench, toward the completed work.

"When I pull off the blindfold," Xander said huskily, "I want you to look straight ahead, and just don't… say anything."

"Yeah." It was hoarse and sexy and Xander realized that Spike was aroused by this contact. He wondered at that, wondered if he'd be allowed to play with the idea of sensory deprivation later, but right now he needed Spike to see.

Xander pulled off the blindfold and Spike opened his eyes. When they slid into focus Spike's mouth dropped open as he saw... Himself. In game face for the first time, drinking down a slayer.

"Xand..." Spike choked, and stopped, staring at the piece of art that had stolen Saturdays.

"Do you like it?"

"I..." The vampire took a deep breath, moved forward in a daze and stopped again. "I'm at a loss for words."

Xander had to admit that it was pretty impressive and took a moment to admire it with fresh eyes. There stood Spike, smooth, triumphant maple, clutching the Slayer against him, wrenching her head aside and sinking his teeth in. It was Spike exactly as Xander had seen him in the moment he'd destroyed the Telltrumank, and it was intense. It had been slow work, exacting measurement and excruciatingly careful carving to get everything perfect. But it had been worth it.

The slayer was wounded and in agony, on the brink of death - Xander had used everything he knew to make the wounds that the real Spike had inflicted look as though the wooden one had done it. Maple fingers set perfectly against carved ebony hair, vampiric teeth slid into the semi-circle groove left by Spike's. It had been trying but it had been SO worth it.

The slayer wasn't wearing much, just a rough representation of animal skin, so neither was the carved Spike. They were honed down to their most basic, primal forms, knobbled spines, rigid muscles, and the perfect tension that suspended them both - the same power that Spike brought to everything was here - brutality, love of the dance - Xander was proud of himself.

The real Spike was standing still as a statue and Xander let him enjoy the moment of narcissism. As far as he knew it was the first time the vampire had seen himself in three dimensions in over a hundred years, it was a sight worth taking in.

* * *

The statue got mixed reviews from their friends. Tara was impressed and complimentary, she said it was powerful, evocative, sexy. Willow pouted over Xander's absenteeism, hesitant to enjoy anything that caused her friend to disappear for so long, and wondered aloud about possible racial ramifications of the image, which made Xander cringe. Anya nearly had a spontaneous orgasm at how much they could sell it for, but Spike cut the suggestion off with a snarl and faced with the sculpted evidence of his occasional brutality she hadn't argued - much. Buffy... Buffy wasn't thrilled.

She felt for the first slayer, felt empathy and pain on her ancestor's behalf and it took her a long time to understand that it wasn't "vampire triumphs over Slayer" but more of a representation of the unexpected. Spike the savior, the defeat of a Slayer that was old, and tired, and had been allowed to pass on the burden. This slayer had handed it to Buffy, Buffy handed it to Kendra, Kendra handed it to Faith, and when Faith was done she would hand it to someone else. He'd carved a moment of hope and renewal, a contrast between good and evil yes, but also a contrast between timeless and tired.

At least that's what he told Buffy. He sent pictures to Dawn and she called him at six o'clock in the morning demanding to know how long they'd been fucking and why no one had told her. Xander stammered his way through an explanation, an apology, expert groveling, and the vague suggestion that it was none of her business. The world went on, and it was better.

Xander lived happily ever after except for the occasional apocalypse.

Spike didn't live, but he was damned happy with that.

The End.


End file.
